Laurie May—aka Preacher’s Daughter—annotated the results of the experiment, darkened the screens on her computers, and sat back in her chair. She detested office work. She especially hated science. She had a Master of Arts in Religious Studies with an emphasis on monotheistic religions. Although there were some who tried to apply science to explain religions, most frequently the suspect science of psychology, she knew better. After all, who else had she known who’d been captured by Sufi mystics and held hostage in order to power the mind of a dying demi-god? She’d been up to her eyeballs in real life games between gods and men and didn’t need any PhD trying to placate her beliefs with their scientific theories.
“Ms. May, can you run through the results one more time,” came a voice over her desk speaker. “I want to verify before I input them into the master database. Remember what they say. Measure twice, cut once.”
She imagined emptying a thirty-round clip from an HK416 into the speaker.
“Ms. May, do you copy? I need to know if you hear me.”
His name was Dr. Norris Fields. He was a thirty-year-old wunderkind who held a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience with an emphasis in extrospection from the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. Fields had done his thesis regarding Non-Linear Memory Retention. He eschewed the Ebbinghaus Forgetful Curve and had created his own topological model that they were trying to prove through experimentation.
Which was not the sort of thing she’d imagined herself doing when she’d joined Special Unit 77. She was a gun jockey and not a research monkey. Not that research wasn’t important, it was just that she felt her talents were best used elsewhere. She was a five-foot-ten-inch thirty-two-year-old combat veteran of two wars with multiple tours, capable of equally identifying supernatural entities in the wild without resorting to theism and breaking down any man-held or crew-served weapon currently or historically in use. Truth be told, when she’d been informed of the opportunity to be assigned to an excitable freshly-minted scientist who wanted to change the world, she naïvely thought that it was a grand idea and a great way to break her teeth on the ins and outs of her new unit. But now after three months, six days, and seventeen hours of not being in the field she was afraid she might pop off like a fifty-year old Soviet-made land mine.
“Ms. May, are you there?”
“I’m here, Norris. I will recheck the data and send it to you.”
He hesitated to respond. She knew why. He hated being called by his first name and much preferred Doctor, but he was young and full of himself and she felt it her duty to disabuse him of his notion that he was anything more than a newly-minted excitable scientist fresh from the educational womb.
She did as promised, and spent another forty-five minutes ensuring that the computational data was correct, then fired it off to him. She didn’t give him a chance to react, instead, grabbed her pack, turned off her workstations, and headed to the indoor firing range. She was into her three hundredth round when Lieutenant Poe arrived wearing his 1950s standard issue OD green Army uniform complete with tie and belt. The uniform was as much an anachronism as he was. He was too old to be a lieutenant and the military hadn’t authorized that particular uniform in over sixty years. Still, he was one of the only members of Special Unit 77 who wore a uniform of any sort, probably as a reminder to everyone that it was a military organization and not some pseudo mercenary outfit operating outside the jurisdiction of any actual government. Otherwise, no one would ever know that the complex of abandoned warehouses which were once part of a Chevrolet assembly plant on the edge of Muncie, Indiana, was now a secret government enclave with an even more secret mission. Every week the guards reported locals coming to see if there were any jobs at the plants, hoping beyond hope that they could go back to what their families had done before it had all been taken away.
“You come to watch me fire, or to dress me down?” she asked when she was finally through and cleaning her weapon.
In truth, she was still a reserve lieutenant in the military intelligence corps of the United States Army. So, on the surface of it, she and Poe were equals. But he wore lieutenant’s bars to throw people off. No one put a lieutenant in charge of an entire organization like Special Unit 77. Her former mentor and friend, Boy Scout, figured that Poe had to be at least a lieutenant colonel if not a full bird.
“A little of both,” he said. He was the Midwest all-American—fit, six feet tall, crew cut blonde hair, square-jawed—everything American wanted in its fighting man, but he seemed more at ease with himself than most people were with themselves. “Doctor Fields is doing important work, PD.”
She so loved that he still referred to her by her call sign. She still felt awkward using her real name. “Norris is a good kid.”
He sighed. “That’s what I mean. Why do you have to call him Norris? Why don’t you call him Dr. Fields?”
“It’s his name.”
“He’s only a year younger than you.”
She gave him her best smile. “He’s just such a cute little scientist, isn’t he?”
Poe sighed. “I’m sending you on a mission.”
She stopped cold.
“A mission?”
“I’m putting you in charge.”
She smacked her pistol back together. “About damn time. When do we leave?”
“A little under three hours. You have a mission brief and need to be at the special weapons armory.”
“Special weapons?” She felt her heart skip a beat. “Can you tell me what we’re after?”
“That’s all going to be in the brief.” He turned to leave. “Oh, and Preacher’s Daughter?”
“Yes?”
“You’re taking Professor Fields with you as an observer. Don’t get him killed.”
Her jaw dropped as she struggled to say something, but her body knew better. If she complained, she might lose her chance to get out of this place. She had to play nice. And that included her treatment of Norris.
Three hours and forty minutes later she was already regretting Poe’s order to bring him along.
He had his own personalized gear, which was the first thing that should have been a concern. He wore gray and blue urban cammies with matching body armor and ballistic helmet. He wore yellow shooting goggles and had his own personalized set of 9mm pistols in matching shoulder holsters. A knife the size of a baby’s arm was strapped to his right thigh. Combat knee pads and elbow pads were in place. He looked like he’d just modeled for Soldier of Fortune magazine or a video game while the rest of them looked like practical urban terrorists.
She and the other four men on her team wore 5.11 tactical pants in black, not because of the popularity, but because of the stretch, give, and durability. The T-shirt of their choice—hers was an Iron Maiden concert T-shirt. Black combat boots, ballistic helmets, and body armor rounded out their non-traditional uniform. The idea was that they should go in with as little as needed and with absolutely no attribution. So, no flags, no patriotic patches, no well-known sayings. Just what they needed.
As it turned out, their special equipment was actually special ammunition and it wasn’t as special as one might think. There were no silver bullets. There was no holy water in hand grenades. All they had were 410 gauge pistols made by Taurus called the Judge which used shotgun shells filled with Himalayan Rock Salt and lead balls. They each carried two and had several bandoliers of 410 shells. Which according to the mission brief was just what they required if they were going to take down a monster’s nest of homunculi.
She’d let Norris keep his pistols but had taken all of his ammo.
He was furious at first, but when reminded that she was mission commander, he resorted to fuming, resembling a teenager who’d just been told he couldn’t play any more video games. She knew he’d make her pay, but for now, it was best for him and the mission if he stayed in the rear with the gear and didn’t have anything he could accidentally shoot them with.
The other four men on her team had no trouble with her being in charge. During the relatively short time she’d been in Special Unit 77 she’d interacted with all of them either on the combatives mat or on the range and they knew her to be as much a professional as they were. Plus, they’d been allowed to read the file about her last mission, where she had survived interaction with Zoroastrian demons. That alone gave her enough street cred for a thousand miles of bad decisions.
The mission was to travel to a Western Pennsylvania farmhouse that had been taken over by an infestation of homunculi. Special Unit 77 would normally allow another of the country’s special units, like SEAL Team 666 or the Pathfinders, to take them out, but 77’s proximity to the supernatural outbreak made them a prime candidate. Their mission was normally to protect the continental United States and her technology from supernatural exploitation from other countries. 77 had been around since the Cold War and was the tip of the spear in protecting the West Coast of America for decades. Since the advent of global media and travel, the mission was expanded. Their traditional headquarters of San Francisco was moved to Indiana where they could better respond to threats to the homeland on and in between all coasts and borders.
The other four shooters on the team were all ex Special Forces or Rangers. Their names weren’t necessary and neither were complicated call signs representing any past deeds. Instead, for this mission, they were Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta and she would be Zulu. Norris would be November but he should never be in the position to ever touch a radio or likewise be mentioned on one.
The infestation had been discovered by a 77 tech specialist monitoring Instagram accounts. Detected initially by an algorithm, the short 46-second video dubbed over with Nikki Minaj’s ‘Superbass’ showed the tiny figures swinging from the rafters of an unknown barn. It was later during video forensics that it was discovered that they were using the entrails of a large unknown animal for their ropes. Although there were no humans in the video, it was a presumptive fact that the person holding and recording the video was human and it was within the metadata that they discovered the location. That was thirteen hours ago. Not only did they need to ensure that they kept the infestation local, but also that other entities did not get their hands on the homunculi.
They rode in the back of a UH-53J PaveLow Helicopter flying at 120 mph towards the microscopic Amish community of Mascot in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The county itself was the largest grouping of Amish in the United States with upwards of 35,000 residents. She’d laughed when she’d seen the map. Thinking how conservative the Amish must be, having towns with peculiar names like Intercourse, Blue Ball, and Bird in the Hand was something out of a fiction novel instead of real life. They were headed towards a chicken farm. They planned on hitting the buildings at 2AM and ensuring that the infiltration was eradicated. Once mission accomplished, another crew would go in to investigate who it was and why they’d decided to create the artificial creations—basically trying to determine whether it was an accident of curiosity or a full-scale intentional engagement of the mysterious and forbidden.
Lights went out when they descended beneath the clouds.
Everyone checked their coms which ran through a basic special operations multi-interband team radio or MBITR. She lowered her NODS—night vision devices—over her eyes and adjusted them to her vision. She watched the red glow form the bulb over the rear door and listened to the flight crew as they flared in for a combat landing.
Preacher’s Daughter had a sense of déjà vu. She’d been on so many combat missions in the last few years but only with a select group led by Boy Scout. She hadn’t heard from him since she’d last seen him near Fort Irwin and Death Valley. And then of course there was McQueen and Narco and Criminal and Bully, all now deceased. They’d been the best brothers and sisters in arms she’d ever worked with. Was it true that she was the last one alive? She could hardly believe it. Part of her wanted to be with her lost brethren but then she knew that’s not what they would have wanted. Boy Scout and McQueen especially—oh, McQueen—would have wanted her to live life to the fullest, grab it by the throat and throttle it until it gave her more.
If this wasn’t doing that then she didn’t know what that meant.
She thumped against the inside of the helicopter as it slammed to the ground.
The red light switched to green.
The ramp lowered and before it even hit the ground they were down and past it, single file, Alpha, Bravo, November, Charlie, and Delta behind her. The air was crisp but the sky was clear. The ground had been mown within the last few days and still had clumps of dead grass along the rows. They moved as a team for twenty meters, then stopped, got down, and made an arrow formation.
To the right sat a two-story farm house, a light on in the kitchen above the stove but otherwise nothing else. To the left stood an immense three-floor red barn with Pennsylvania Dutch Hex signs on all sides. The Daddy Hex tulip star was high up on the front of the barn which generally meant goodwill and was present to avert famine. But intermixed with traditional Dutch hexes on the sides were wiccan witch hexes that she absolutely didn’t expect to see.
She relayed the information into her microphone, not for common knowledge, just so it would be recorded for post mission briefings and posterity. They also had video cams affixed to the sides of their helmets.
“Traditional Pennsylvanian Dutch hex symbols. Father Hex. Single Distlefink. Double Distlefink. Maple. Colonial Eagle. All common Teutonic symbols brought from Europe as pagan vestiges. Intermixed, however, with Seax Wiccan symbols. SW is a syncretic wiccan religion of Saxon origin codified in 1974 by Raymond Buckland. It’s not considered real wicca, but something for housewives to mess around with and not burn their homes to the ground or invite a wandering soul to inhabit their babies. More new age than real magic.”
“Then why is it on the side of a building with homunculi?” Norris asked, out of breath.
“Radio silence, November,” she snapped. She didn’t need his margin notes on her verbal report.
But it was a good question. It begged the idea that whoever was inside had been messing around and things had gotten out of hand. She much preferred that than the alternate which mean there was a dedicated sorcerer determined to create aberrations to do his or her own will.
One was plain evil.
The other was plain stupid.
She signaled them to move out.
Their order of march was the same.
They moved to the front door of the barn. She’d considered splitting the group, but they were such a small force as it was, she didn’t want to put them in a position where they had to be on the defense. Also, with November along, it took one of her men out of the formation to take care of him so she really had herself and three pax to conduct the assault.
Given all of that information it might as well be frontal.
“Alpha. Prepare to breach.”
Alpha moved next to her and tested the door. It was locked. He placed a small wad of plastic explosive on it along with a wired device. He spun around to the side of the wall as did she. The others moved to the side.
“Breach.”
He depressed a button on his remote and the sound of a gun going off along with a puff of smoke came from the shattered locking mechanism. He shoved the remote into a bail out pouch on the side of his gear, grabbed the door and gave her a look.
“Enter.”
He jerked the door open and slid inside, tactical crouch, a Judge in both hands held low at a forty-five-degree angle.
Bravo went next.
Then Charlie.
She followed with November behind her and Delta bringing up the rear.
The inside of the barn was wide open, reaching three full stories. Far in the back were double-stacked haylofts, but they only took up a fifth of the internal volume of the structure. The floor looked like it could hold hundreds of Amish and was probably used as a meeting place. No horse stalls or closets. Just space. In the Starlight created by the night-vision devices everything was cast in a green glow whether it be dark or bright. The only light inside the barn came from ambience outside the line of windows which were high on the walls near the ceiling. Everything else was variegated shadows of multifloras green.
Movement out of the corner of her eye made her head twist, but she couldn’t see what it was. She dialed up Alpha’s view and watched as a roughly human-shaped figure two feet tall with extra-long arms slid along a cable, then swung into the shadows at the back of the barn.
“Zulu, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Alpha asked.
“Roger. I’m tied into your feed.”
“Looks like they might be gathering at the other end.”
She switched to Delta’s feed who was watching this end of the barn. He was staring at things high up in the rafters. It looked as if children had been hung there or perhaps babies.
“Delta, what am I seeing?”
“Your answer is as good as mine. I don’t know. No heat signatures on the bodies so if those are what I think they are they’ve been dead for a while.”
She cursed internally. The thing about homunculi was that they were more than pests, they were collectors. If left to their own accord, they would latch onto one of the first things they saw and then search those things out to collect. They couldn’t help themselves. It was the way their tiny fabricated brains were wired. And if the first thing they came across had been a human child in the home, then there was a tremendous chance that children from all over the county were missing as well, now hung from the rafters, thirty feet above them.
“Charlie, Delta. Other side.”
Now that she’d seen the internal layout, she felt comfortable deploying her men on the other side of the structure. More importantly, she needed to see what was above them.
“Anyone see the junction box?”
“I got it over here,” Charlie replied.
“Check it. I want these lights on. Want to see the cockroaches swarm.”
Sounds began to creep into her consciousness.
Titterings.
Slidings.
An occasional thump from above.
“Got it. Want me to light ’em up?”
She grinned, holding a single Judge in her right hand. “Sure.”
She dialed back her night vision in time not to go blind as lights from six different hanging lamps came to life.
Her gaze went directly to the figures hanging above them.
“Dear god!” November exclaimed. “Are those children?”
“Incoming,” Alpha called.
She crouched and swung her pistol around with two hands counting dozens of creatures running across the floor towards them, while others descended from the rafters on cords. Half of the children she’d seen hanging from the ceiling dropped as well—not children, but the little creatures, previously misidentified and hidden in shadow.
“Take them out,” she cried.
She fired at the nearest target, its legs moving impossibly fast as it ran across the floor towards her, arms out, fingers eager to grab. While she’d never felt their strength, she’d read how improbable it was. The weapon kicked in her hands unexpectedly. She’d forgotten she was essentially firing a shotgun shell from a pistol.
The creature’s chest evaporated as the lead eviscerated the skin, followed by the salt which on contact immediately began to melt the nasty little thing wherever it struck. It cried piteously as it rolled on the ground, its arms hugging its chest. A smushed face held thin lips with sharp baby teeth, a little pug nose, and extra-wide marsupial eyes that were not only capable of seeing more color but were as accurate in the dark as their own technology.
Other members of the team fired around her.
She fired four more times, then reloaded, each round catching one of the tiny thugs center mass. She’d just begun to reload, when she heard a scream from behind her. She turned and saw that November was firing one of his pistols at a homunculus which had latched onto his leg. The first question was why did he even have any ammunition and her second was why had he left her side.
After a quick check she saw that the rest of the team was positively engaged.
She finished loading, flipped the revolver closed and took seven tactical steps towards him.
She put the pistol to the back of the homunculus’s head and fired.
Green and gray matter sprayed all over November’s leg and gear.
She grabbed him and pulled him back to the side of the barn.
“Holster that weapon, November. I don’t want you firing anymore.”
He stared at her through wide eyes but made no move to comply.
“I said holster the weapon.”
He complied, his hand shaking so much it took him three times to get the pistol secure.
She cursed and turned back to the ruckus.
At first glance it looked as if the floor had been littered with dead babies. But a closer examination revealed that they all had the face of Batboy from the Weekly World News, a picture that most people believed to have been a fake but was really that of a homunculus. Because they were arcanely made, they’d start to decompose soon and when they did, she wanted to be nowhere near the scene.
“Zulu, this is Alpha. We have a situation.”
With all of the creatures down and out, she left Delta to babysit November and she, Bravo, and Charlie rushed to Alpha’s side. What she saw made her heart sink. What had been nothing more than shooting apples in a barrel had just become serial murder. Two adults were nailed to the wall under the lower hayloft. She recognized the hex symbol they’d been nailed to—two doves above two hearts above the trinity tulips—which was ironically the marriage hex.
Fucking homunculi and their sense of humor. The hands of the man and woman had been sewn together, as had their faces. Their eyes were missing as was their hair, which had probably been braided and used as thread by the homunculi. Their chests had been cracked wide open and their entrails were missing. She didn’t have to look up to know what they’d been used for. She was close enough to touch the pair but would let the next team remove them along with all the other evidence. The woman’s nipples had been cut off as well as the man’s genitals. Then she noticed the teeth marks. No, not cut off.
“Bravo and Charlie. How are we doing?”
“This is Charlie. Not sure. Feels anticlimactic. I can’t help but feel we’re missing something.”
“This is Bravo. What he said. Something feels off.”
“Delta. Status.”
Silence.
She turned to look at her team but Delta wasn’t where he should have been. Neither was November. She spun them up in her optics, but those were dark where Delta and November were concerned. A yawning pit opened in her stomach. Fate chose this moment to remind her that this was the first time she’d led operators into combat. She’d taken it for granted how easy it would—should—be, but then she remembered back in ROTC when eight of her former classmates had gotten lost supporting a ROBIN SAGE Exercise at Fort Bragg—the final two week test for US Army Special Forces. She’d had to go in and rescue them, showing them that it should have been impossible to get lost at Fort Bragg, especially with all of the roads bisecting the fort like incisions in a great military Frankenstein.
And now this.
Her own team.
She was as out of her element now as the other eight had been then. She knew this because her first inclination was to doubt herself, something she was sure Boy Scout never did and she hated herself for it. She’d been involved with such a great team she’d forgotten that all teams weren’t made—they were forged. And she’d never had the opportunity to forge her own. She’d taken for granted that they would all follow her lead, even if it was unspoken.
“Everyone on me,” she commanded. She turned and surveyed the space. There had to be three dozen dead homunculi scattered on the floor and another ten dangling from the ceiling. “Shoot anything that moves under thirty-two inches.”
She moved with purpose, slowly, examining the walls, ceiling and floor as she did. When she came to where Delta and November had been, she couldn’t help but note that there was a trap door in the floor. The reason they hadn’t noted it in the beginning was they’d been so focused on what they’d thought were dangling children on the ceiling and the onslaught on the ground, that she’d failed to note that they’d been standing on the door the entire time.
She tried to call Delta and November again but received no response.
She ordered the door opened.
While Alpha and Brave did as told, she and Charlie covered the opening as it gaped, then yawned, revealing a set of wooden stairs slanting into the darkness.
“Charlie, stay in position and watch our six. The rest of you with me.”
She led the way down the stairs and into the darkness, flipping to IR. She immediately saw movement, but couldn’t make out what she was seeing. It was as if there were hundreds of undulating bodies surrounding a lone figure. The IR wasn’t helping. They needed light. She dialed up the flashlight on the right side of her head.
Alpha and Bravo followed suit.
Three bisecting beams of light revealed that the undulations were actually homunculi being formed—gestating from the corpses of the chickens that had once been used to lay eggs—and standing in the middle of it all was a teenage girl who couldn’t be more than sixteen, Middle English spells dripping from her lips as she urged the bitty creatures to birth forth.
She didn’t want to kill a kid if she didn’t have to, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t wound one. She pulled a 9mm from a thigh holster and fired three times, catching the girl in both of her legs. She screamed as she fell, but the undulations continued.
The basement seemed to take up the same space as the meeting room above. She finally spied lights, but Charlie got to them first and lit up the scene.
She had her men begin killing the creatures before they were fully formed, most of them still in various stages of transformation.
In a far corner she spied several figures on the ground.
She ran for them and noted that there were six in all.
They were three dead teenage boys, their overalls draped around their ankles, their hands cupping their privates. She’d suspected something of the sort. Besides a body to grow from, homunculi also needed sperm for their creation. Another was a middle-aged man, perhaps a farm hand or the brother to the father. He was also stripped, but his hands were at his sides. What was left of his genitals had been chewed away.
But her eyes were for the last two.
Delta was dead, his eyes gone, stolen by god knew what.
November whimpered and screamed into the crook of his right arm as a new born homunculi suckled at the fingers of his left hand. No, not suckled—it was eating the fingers of his left hand.
She ran over and shot the fucking arcane abortion in the back of the head, then knelt, jerked out her first aid kit, and began to wrap the man’s mauled hand.
She looked into Field’s crazed eyes and knew he’d never be the same again.
She wouldn’t be either.
She’d underestimated the threat and gone into the situation without knowing the layout of the area of operations. And because of her lack of planning, she’d gotten one person killed and the other permanently crippled.
Yeah.
She was one hell of a leader.
Get the statue ready.